Two weeks before I was rushed into hospital the hardest blow came. In a check-up with my gastroenterologist, I explained how I was struggling to eat because of ulcers in my mouth and throat that made me almost cry when I ate and I was constantly exhausted.

I expected him to help until he leaned forward with fake sincerity and asked ‘do you watch what you eat? Do you look for the healthy low calorie options?’

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I was confused, of course I ate healthily but I also loved crisps and chocolate, but this was irrelevant.

When I showed my confusion he put it bluntly: ‘Is it possible you have an eating disorder?’

I couldn’t believe it, here I was in pain and the person I went to for help just wasn’t listening to me.

In November 2005 my symptoms reached an all-time high. I had a fever and could barely get out of bed or stay awake for any amount of time.

I had an emergency appointment with my GP who upon hearing that I couldn’t even gulp down water sent me straight to A&E.

My memories of this time are blurry, I had no energy and was on a lot of medication. Luckily my mother was there with me every single day so she filled in the gaps.

At the hospital they did tests and we were stunned to hear the words ‘cancer’ and ‘leukaemia’ banded around. Lupus mimics a lot of other illnesses, so all signs pointed to that and there was where we hit another wall.

As I was 16, nearing 17, I was seen as too old to go onto the child’s cancer ward, but the lower limit for the adult cancer ward was 18. I was just a year out of life saving treatment.

A few calls and several hours later I was rushed to the Newcastle RVI by ambulance.

The one memory I do have from this time is meeting with a junior doctor at past 1am in the morning.

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He told us that if we’d waited a few hours longer I wouldn’t have made it.

The next day on the main ward I was lucky to have a doctor who had treated lupus before so he spotted the symptoms and pushed for further tests.

I had blood tests and a bone marrow scrape to determine it. I was then prescribed a cocktail of medication including steroids and antimalarial.

I also had to be tube fed as I’d lost over a stone in weight.

After diagnosis, I was able to get healthier (Picture: Rachel Charlton-Dailey)

Lupus is an illness that affects just five million people worldwide, mostly women of childbearing age. The illness is triggered mainly by hormonal changes; mine is most likely attributed to acne medication.

Some common lupus symptoms are:

Joint/muscle pains

Extreme fatigue

Rashes

Flu-like symptoms

Weight gain or loss

Migraine

Oral/nasal ulcers

Hair loss

Depression

Anaemia

Swollen glands

Poor blood circulation

Low immunity

Photosensitivity

Poor appetite, vomiting and diarrhoea

Over the course of my teenage years I had all of these symptoms in varying degrees but they were either brushed off or attributed to my other illnesses.

Unfortunately lupus is notoriously hard to diagnose.

Figures from Lupus UK state that lack of awareness leads to an average delay in diagnosis of 6.5 years.

Chris Wincup, Clinical Research Fellow in Rheumatology at University College London, sheds some light on why diagnosis is so difficult

‘As lupus can cause so many symptoms it is often difficult to diagnose and this is made especially challenging as it may mimic other diseases.’

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He adds that testing through identifying the irregular antibodies is hard as ‘these antibodies are commonly seen in lupus but are not specific to the disease and so this can be difficult to interpret.’